One Dark Night
by jadedolphin
Summary: 2 weeks after the end of the war, Harry has a surprising encounter with someone while mourning the fallen, and makes a discovery that will change his life forever. DH compliant.
1. Chapter 1

**I know that I shouldn't be starting on another story right now as I have quite enough to work on, but this idea has been nagging at me for forever and I finally decided to get it down. Don't worry, this will in no way affect my continuance of **_**Confronting the Future. **_

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the characters nor am I making any sort of profit off of this story.

_**One Dark Night**_

It had been nearly two weeks since the defeat of Voldemort. The initial elation over the ending of the war, and the beginning of a new life, had given way to an overwhelming sense of melancholy. So many great men and women had been lost over the last years of the war, and the Battle of Hogwarts had gone down in history as one of the worst massacres that the Wizarding world had seen. Now that the times of constant fear and fighting were finally over, the world's focus turned to remembering the fallen and rebuilding that which was lost.

Harry Potter, "The Boy-Who-Lived," "The Chosen One," and "The Hero of the Wizarding World" had been in the center of it all. As one who had been instrumental in the ending of the war, he had to be present and visible among the survivors, a symbol to those who needed hope. Over the past two weeks, he had attended countless funerals, shaken hands with the bereaved, and given words of comfort to they that needed them. Everyone wanted something from him, and as a result, he had had very little time to deal with his own issues and grief. He had taken to wearing glamours whenever he ventured away from the Burrow, where he had been staying with his friends, in an effort to keep from being mobbed.

So was how he could be found this breezy and cloudy night, wearing a spell to hide his appearance as he walked through the cemetery that had been set aside for many of those who had died during the Battle of Hogwarts. For once the place was barren of other life, giving Harry the chance to finally mourn in peace. He had lost so many people that he had cared for and loved: Remus, Tonks, Fred, even Colin Creevey who had been much too young to have died the way that he did. So many people taken away from those who they loved and from those who had loved them, and Harry honored them all with a silent prayer for their peace, and a reverent touch to each of their gravestones as he walked along. All of the stones had been adorned with flowers and cards by others who had been around during the day to pay their respects… all but one.

Harry frowned as he stopped in front of the headstone of the one person who had sacrificed and suffered the most for his efforts in the war against Voldemort, but had been without anyone to even mourn for him. Even now knowing what he did about the man, Harry was unsure of what he felt about Severus Snape. The man had made Harry's life a living hell for over six years, and had used every opportunity that he could to belittle and humiliate the young teen. And yet, that same man had saved Harry's life so many times, in spite of his own loathing of the boy. Despite all of the animosity between the two of them over the years, Harry knew that he owed his life to Severus, and as loathe as he was to admit it, he respected the man more than any other he had ever met.

A shadow passed over Harry as he gazed at the Potion Master's final resting place, and he looked up to see that a young woman had come up behind him on feet as silent as a ghost's. He automatically reached up to brush the down the fringe of his hair in order to cover the scar on his forehead before remembering his altered appearance. He needn't have bothered though, as the girl only gave him a passing glance as she continued on to the grave in front of him. She contemplated the bare headstone for a few minutes, head bowed in reverence, before pulling out her wand and conjuring a wreath of midnight blue flowers that were so dark that they could easily be considered black, and hanging it on the headstone. Harry looked on in surprise, and thought that the added decoration suited his former teacher quite well; dark and plain, yet elegant and sophisticated in their own way.

"Did you know him?"

Harry focused back on the girl in surprise, her back was still facing him as she stared intensely at Snape's grave, but she was clearly speaking to him.

"Er – yeah I did – he was one of my professors at Hogwarts. I'm guessing you didn't go there?" The girl seemed slightly older than school age, but even so he felt he would have at least recognized her if she had been at Hogwarts around the same time that he had been there. Not to mention how noticeable her American Accent was.

"No I didn't. I graduated from Abrakad Academy of Magic in the US three years ago, but I've been living here in the UK for the last couple of years." She finally turned to face him but her features were slightly hidden in the shadows, and what was visible of her expression was completely unreadable. "I've been following everything that's happened in the war pretty closely. I had heard that this man was an active Death Eater under Voldemort's regime." There was a nearly undetectable hard edge to her voice that inexplicably awakened a sense of protectiveness in Harry.

"Those were just rumors, Severus Snape was a spy against Voldemort, and the information that he provided to the Order of the Phoenix and to Dumbledore made all the difference in the war." The young woman raised an eyebrow, but otherwise her expression remained inscrutable.

"I had heard that, but you never can tell what is truth and what is fabrication, besides I'm sure that Snape did not join Voldemort with the sole interest of becoming a spy. Which suggest that at least at one point in his life, he agreed with the ideals of the Death Eaters; who's to say he wasn't still evil and had simply changed sides because he figured that the Light stood more of a chance of winning." She shrugged "I know that a lot of people did that; realized that it was only a matter of time before Voldemort fell, and did what they could to align themselves with those who opposed them. That doesn't necessarily mean that their initial feelings changed, only that they found a better arrangement."

"So that's what you believe, that Professor Snape only changed sides because he didn't want to go down with Voldemort. Do you really think he would risk his life based solely on that?" Harry was starting to get angry now, he knew that despite his own testimony of the man's actions, Severus Snape was still hated and mistrusted among much of the Wizarding world.

"I never mentioned anything about my own beliefs." The girl countered cooly, her calm but slightly patronizing tone suggested that she was unimpressed with his little display of temper. "I was only stating the facts that I had gathered on my own." Harry felt oddly chastened by her annoyance and hastened to modify his own tone in response.

"Well, why don't I give you some other facts to add to those so that you can form your own opinion then." He said more calmly, sitting down on the ground. "That is if you have the time," he added when she made no move to join him. After a moment the girl nodded and sat across from him, and waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts and begin.

"Severus Snape was a truly complicated man. He didn't have a very good childhood; there may have been some abuse involved there, but at the very least I know that he and his father had a pretty hostile relationship and I'm unsure of his mother. He didn't really have any friends or anyone to relate to for a long time –" Harry paused here and sighed a bit, thinking of the parallels with his own childhood. " – least not until he was nine, when he met a girl, a muggleborn that didn't know she was a witch, and the two of them became good friends until it was time for them to go to Hogwarts. Unfortunately, when they got to school Snape was sorted into Slytherin and the girl went to Gryffindor. The two of them attempted to maintain their friendship in spite of the house rivalries and at some point Snape even fell in love with the girl, but that was pretty one-sided and eventually his Slytherin ties tore their friendship apart. On top of all that, he spent most of his school years being bullied and harassed by a group of students, and then had to watch as his only friend fell in love with the ringleader of the group. After that he was essentially alone accept for his housemates who seemed to take full advantage of his lonlieness and depression; he fell in with the wrong crowd, and without his friendship with my m – er – I mean his friend, there was nothing holding him back from joining Voldemort." Here Harry paused again, trying to determine what to say next.

"He was really young then, and I don't think that he _really _understood what he was getting himself into by joining the Death Eaters. I think they appealed to him by offering him a place where he could belong, and giving him a since of power that had constantly been taken away from him when dealing with his father and with his tormentors at school." Harry knew that if he had been made a similar offer during those dark days before he had met Ron and Hermione, he probably would have been sucked into the same trap; he couldn't help but feel some kinship with the young boy who was so lost and confused and had nowhere else to turn. "By the time he realized his mistakes, it was too late to take them back, and the only thing he could do to fix things was to use his position in Voldemort's ranks against him by becoming a spy." Harry's voice became harder, almost challenging, as if he were just daring the girl to contradict him.

"Snape knew that his deliberate betrayal of Voldemort and the Death Eaters could, and most likely would, get him killed one day; and yet he kept at it for sixteen years. Eventually that decision really did cost him his life, but if it weren't for him, so many more lives could have been lost; his sacrifice was one of the main reasons that this war ended the way that it did!" For a while, the two young adults simply sat in silence, as the wind whistled around them.

"It seems as if you knew him very well then. It's too bad things didn't work out differently for him; he and Lily were the victims of a series of awful circumstances. If it hadn't been for the amassing of certain events, both of them may have still been alive today."

"Yeah." Harry agreed sadly, before registering exactly what she had said. "I never mentioned his friend's name, how did you –"

"How did I know?" She smirked evilly at his startled and unnerved expression, and he was struck by an odd sense of déjà-vu, but couldn't place where it had stemmed from. "I know much more than you think…Mr. Potter." Her smirk grew wider as his hand flew immediately to his face to check for the glamour spell he had placed earlier. "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."

"But – how – I – " Harry spluttered, perplexed.

"I've been sort of following you over the past year – at least as best as I could – ever since I found out about your position in this war and how much danger you were in. It wasn't easy since there were so many false reports of sightings of you, and you and your friends had been doing a pretty good job of keeping yourself hidden. But I did hear of your more ah…adventurous stunts, and let me just say that you nearly gave me a heart attack with most of them Mr. Potter." Here her voice grew stern and chastising, and Harry shrank back a bit despite himself. "Honestly, infiltrating the Ministry of Magic when you were practically number one on their 'Most Wanted' list, and seemingly going about it on only a wing-and-a-prayer to boot! I would hope that you three at least had some semblance an actual plan in mind and didn't just run in there to see what would happen, but even so that was almost too close of a call. Then getting yourselves captured by Death Eaters and nearly killed at Malfoy Manor – yes I heard about that – and don't even get me _started_ on breaking into Gringotts and escaping on a _dragon_! You, young man, are extremely lucky to still be here in one piece." She shook her head at him with a disgustedly exasperated expression, and Harry finally managed to recover his voice.

"So why have you been so interested anyway, you don't seem like the stalkerish fan-girl type. But I can't imagine why else you've been following me so closely. I'm guessing you were worried that your 'hero' would get himself killed before the job of killing Voldemort completed?" He asked bitterly, even after all of this time, Harry still hated being considered as some sort of 'beacon' for the rest of the world. He was beginning to feel more like some sort of weapon that had had to be safeguarded before it could be utilized; even after the war was over, people still tended to treat him like that, and it was irritating beyond belief. Harry hadn't even noticed that he was standing until the girl got to her feet as well and crossed her arms, annoyed, as she waited for him to finish his little fit; something about that stance seemed familiar and made him pause.

"No. I assure you, I am _not_ '_stalkerish_' or a '_fan-girl_' as you so eloquently put it." Her voice positively dripped with venomous disdain and Harry actually shivered a bit. "I had my own reason for being concerned over your continued welfare."

"Which was?" Harry asked weakly, starting a bit in surprise as she suddenly moved closer to him, coming to stand directly in the light. Her facial features seemed vaguely familiar to him, but it was her eyes that startled him the most as he recognized them as the same brilliant emerald orbs that he saw in the mirror every day.

"Because Harry…I'm your sister."

**So did the ending surprise anyone or was it totally obvious from the beginning? **

**This was initially going to be a one-shot but it took on a life of its own; however, there should only actually be about 3 chapters to it. The second chapter is already finished and the third is almost done. If I get enough reviews, I may update tomorrow… we will see ;) **


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the characters nor am I making any sort of profit off of this story.

**Chapter 2**

"You're my – you –what?" Harry stammered dazedly and the girl – his _sister_ snorted back at him.

"Having a little trouble understanding and communicating the English language Mister Potter?" she asked sarcastically, smirking, even as her eyes continued to regard him gently, even sympathetically." Harry took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself after this rather shocking revelation. As he did, he continued to gaze at her and take in her appearance, now beginning to fully process her features.

Her face was very nearly identical to the pictures that he had seen of his mother, with the exception of some key features. Her cheekbones were higher and her face slightly narrower than what he remembered Lily's to be, and her nose while well proportioned with her face, was longer and had a slightly hooked quality to it. She had fairly pale complexion that resembled a healthier version of her father's skin tone, and while her hair was long and as black as night, it also fell in soft waves that framed her face, rather than being stringy or greasy-looking.

It took a minute for Harry to recover his voice, but he finally was able to ask softly, "What's your name?"

"I go by Ally, but my full name is Severalia Lilian Brower."

"Brower?"

"That's the name of my adoptive parents, Tyler and Natalie Brower. They raised me and have been the only parents I've ever known."

"How – ?" He stopped and tried again. "I mean when – ?" Harry had so many questions burning to be asked, that he hardly knew where to begin. His sister grinned at him knowingly and held up a hand.

"How about we sit back down for a bit, and I'll explain from the beginning hmm? It's kind of a long story."

"Alright." The two of them sat back on the ground in front of Severus grave, and Ally prepared herself to begin her tale.

"Well, as you can probably guess by now, the love that Severus Snape had for Lily Evans wasn't as one-sided as it seemed. Lily, my mother, loved him just as much as he loved her at one time. Unfortunately that love didn't seem to be meant to last." She sighed wistfully and looked sad for a moment before brightening a bit. "But of course, everything happens for a reason; if it hadn't have been for things not working out between them, then you may never have been born. Anyway, apparently Severus and Lily were very close throughout their first four and a half years of school, up until the end of their fifth year when they had a huge fight. Lily got pregnant with me a few months before she and Severus had their falling out, and after that she felt that it would be too dangerous for him to have a child around. By then Severus was getting in pretty deep with the Death Eaters, and the last thing that we needed was for one of Voldemort's recruits to have fathered a child by a muggleborn witch. So in order to protect me and herself from becoming targets, Lily used a series of complicated charms to hide the pregnancy as much as possible and then arranged to have me sent to the US, so I would be as far away from the UK and the war going on here as was possible. I grew up safe and happy with great parents, and even though I knew I was adopted, I had no real desire to find out more about my birth parents."

Harry sat and listened to the story with rapt attention and interest, he could understand his mother's reasoning, but he knew it must have been hard to give away her child like that and to hide something so big from someone that she loved so much. He wondered what would have happened if Snape had known that he had a child with Lily, would he have still taken his position in Voldemort's inner circle? Could he have been saved? Perhaps had a nice comfortable life with the woman he loved and his daughter? Of course, as Ally had pointed out, in those circumstances he – Harry – would have never been born so maybe what happened was for the best. A small part of him could help but feel selfish for that thought however, who knows how many lives could have been saved if Severus and Lily had stayed together and he had never been born? Oh well, the past was past now.

"On my seventeenth birthday, I received a package that was sent to my parents after Lily died and was meant to be given to me when I came of age. In it was a letter explaining who my birth parents were and the reasons that I was given away, along with the reason that Lily and James went into hiding with you. I found out just how much Lily loved me and regretted having to give me away, and I found out where my name came from – I was glad to know that I was actually named after someone because I always thought that Severalia was a stupid name for a girl if someone had just come up with it arbitrarily." Ally chuckled about that and Harry joined her. "I wasn't really sure what to think about my father, as far as I knew then, he was still alive and didn't even know I existed. But I had also read enough to deduce that he had hurt my mother somehow, was involved in the dark arts, and was probably dangerous; though I knew that he had to have loved her once. Of course I thought about you a bit, but I figured that it may have been a bit of a shock for you to have an older half-sister dropped into your lap out of nowhere like that, and I still had my own life to live at that point so I put you and Severus out of my mind for the time being." Harry wondered what his reaction would have been 4 years ago to have found out that his mother had had a child with his most hated professor. He probably would have screamed, puked, and then fainted dead away after a revelation like that. Not to mention needing someone to obliviate the idea that his mother and Snape would have actually had to have had _sex_ in order to have a baby out of his head; even knowing what he did now, that thought made him shudder a bit…so yeah…it was probably a good thing that she kept her distance for so long.

After I graduated from school, I spent some time studying with an old Potions Master who lived in California, and he suggested that I spend some time studying abroad. I'm a researcher, and there were hundreds of rare potions ingredients that I wanted to study the properties of, but weren't native to the US. So I ended up traveling around the UK and while I was here, I heard plenty of interesting things about the war on Voldemort. Your name popped up more than once."

"If you came here around the time that I think that you did, then there's a good chance that nothing you heard was anything good." Harry scowled darkly at the memory of the Prophet's attempt to make him look like some sort of insane attention-seeker, and was surprised to see his expression mirrored on his sister's face.

"_That's _an understatement, just about every time I picked up a newspaper, I found some sort of article advertising you as deranged and a liar." She rolled her eyes in memory.

"So I take it you didn't believe them then?"

"Of course not!" Ally exclaimed exasperatedly. "They were extremely transparent with that ridiculous little smear campaign of theirs, the only reason that anyone would have worked _that _hard to defame and discredit you would have been that they knew that you were telling the truth and were trying to keep the more weak-minded populace from believing you. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the idiots lapped it right up like a bunch of mindless dogs. And then, inevitably, the truth came out and it turned out you were right all along; and of course the bastards changed their tunes then, kissing up and calling you the 'Chosen One.' It was beyond disgusting." Her irritated sneer was quite reminiscent of her father's as was her tone, and Harry couldn't help but smile. He felt grateful to hear her indignation on his behalf, and was glad to see that she had inherited both of her parent's ability to think for themselves rather than be swayed by popular opinion.

"Anyway, about a year later, I remember hearing reports that you had disappeared and were believed to be mounting a resistance against Voldemort. I was pretty worried, and wanted to find a way to help you, wherever you were but of course you were pretty impossible to track down. Despite of course – " Here she smirked at him " – all of those rumors of you breaking into various places. I swear I gained a few gray hairs over this past year!" Harry snickered as her tone reminded him a bit of what a mother would sound like, scolding her kids for being reckless. "Around the same time, I heard increasingly disturbing things about my birth father, which made me quite reluctant to ever associate myself with him or let him know of my existence, so I kept most of my focus on you. Then of course came the reports about the Battle of Hogwarts and your testimony of where Severus' true loyalties lay, and the fact that he had been killed by Voldemort. I started to regret the fact that I had never gotten to know him – the real him. I wanted to meet you too, but I figured that it could wait until you had gotten a chance to grieve and deal with your own problems for a bit – I was annoyed at all the people hounding you 24/7, it seemed you could use some breathing room. Anyway, I just decided that I would come tonight and pay my respects to the father that I never knew, and it just so happened that the one other member of my family that I wanted to meet was here as well. I doubt that was a coincidence."

"Yeah so do I. I'm glad that I could meet you, even if it _is _hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that I actually have a sister!"

"Yeah I can imagine that it is hard to take, I've had nearly four years to process it." Ally looked at her brother and was happy that despite his initial shock, he had seemed to take things pretty well. Her eyes narrowed sharply when she saw him shiver slightly as the wind picked up a bit. "Look, we should go now, it's getting pretty cold out here and it would really suck for the 'Hero of the Wizarding World' to survive several encounters with Voldemort, and then die of pneumonia two weeks later." Harry laughed and rolled his eyes, even as he joined her in standing.

"Yeah I guess your right about that. Do you live around here?"

"I'm renting a small flat in London…" She suddenly seemed a bit nervous. "Would you like to come home with me? I could cook dinner and we could talk a bit more."

"I'd like that, I just have to send a message to the Weasley's. I've been staying with them for the last couple of weeks; I actually have my own house that my Godfather left me when he died, but it's so lonely there that I couldn't really stand to stay in it right now."

"I understand, sometimes I feel the same way about my place. I miss living with my parents and having someone to talk to. I normally like my solitude, but sometimes it seems too quiet there all alone… Anyway, enough depressing talk, shall we go?"

"Yeah but hold on for a second." Harry was staring back at the headstone with his head cocked and seemed to be considering something. Suddenly he raised his wand and pointed it at the wreath of flowers that Ally had conjured earlier, and a dozen or so delicate white lilies intertwined themselves around the darker flowers creating a very beautiful effect. "There, that seems much better." Harry smiled and Ally mirrored him.

"Perfect." She said and held out an arm for Harry to take, which he did after only a slight hesitation and together the two apparated to her home in London.

**I didn't really get as many reviews for the last chapter as I was hoping for, but I do want to thank the one reviewer that I did have: Aniketos.**

**The final chapter is going to be mainly Sev/Lily romance, and a at the end the present Snape (or at least his portrait) will finally get to meet the daughter that he never knew about. I'm not sure if anyone is really reading this story, but for anyone that is please let me know if I should post the next chapter or just let the story end here. I really need a little more inspiration and motivation to finish writing the last chapter, so if you would like to see more of this PLEASE review! **


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